News Limited to close The Punch

News Limited has this morning announced the closure of opinion website The Punch.

In the coming weeks the website url will be redirected to news.com.au with opinion content now to be pushed across News Limited’s websites through its national news desk.

Editor of The Punch Tory Maguire told Mumbrella: “We were the first mainstream media player in this space. Obviously we did it differently to the way that other media outlets did as a separate stand alone site, rather than integrated.”

“It allowed us to be innovative, cheeky and have a lot of fun in a way that our competitors weren’t able to do,” she said.

“What this is, is a recognition that the atmosphere that we brought to The Punch is something that has been received really well and therefore the networks wants to be able to take advantage of it fully.”

Staff at The Punch had already been redeployed across News.com.au and the News Limited national news desk.

“After four years of excellent fun and great conversation, this is the final post we’ll be publishing on The Punch.”

“A lot has changed since we launched in 2009 in the way Australians consume news and opinion.

“The little Punch team joined the much bigger integrated News Limited team last year and now our Punch content is joining in too. Punch posts will now be published under the new brand Punch Breaking Views across News Limited’s huge digital news network.

“That means you’ll see us pop up on news.com.au, dailytelegraph.com.au, heraldsun.com.au, couriermail.com.au, adelaidenow.com.au and perthnow.com.au.”

The Punch was founded by former editor of The Daily Telegraph David Penberthy in 2009. At the time Penberthy described it as experiment designed to “celebrate journalism”.

Nic Christensen is the media and technology editor of Mumbrella.
Within the Mumbrella team Nic's responsibilities include writing about media (mainly television, radio and outdoor), media agencies, ad technology and media policy. He is former media writer for The Australian and has also worked as a reporter for The Daily Telegraph and senior producer for Radio 2GB.

This is sad. I really enjoyed The Punch, it was something genuinely different, and well-known for it’s incredibly fiery comment boards.

I’m not privy to data on it’s visitation numbers, but it seemed to be cutting through. It even had it’s moments in the sun – like the time a uni-student submitted an article bagging Triple J for an assessment, and wound up with thousands of Triple J-devotees hurling abuse at her from all directions.

A shame, but hopefully the writers involved go on to bigger and better things across the News empire.

That’s a shame. It was the only NewsLtd site that isn’t rabidly anti-Labor while canonising saint Tony and burying any positive Julia stories deep in the bowels of some unlinked cyberzone. Had a range of perspectives and often interesting content.

ABC Unleashed is part of the ABC website. I vaguely recall “The Australian” went on the internet even before Google was around, you had to find it by going through links if you didn’t remember the URL (America Online was the easiest method).

Of course, the guts is being ripped out of News – full marks for “accenuating the positive”. Your cheque is in the post, Tone.

Horsehit IC-1101. They regularly beat TEN, look at their radio ratings, look at iView, look at the ABC shops, look at their magazines, look at their website. They may not be commercial but they sure as hell are mainstream.